Disc Imaging for Backup/Restore

brad-

We're getting a backup server soon and I was curious what software you guys like for disc imaging and backup/restore.

I have used Symantec Ghost in the past and I liked it.

What do you use? What do you like?

RTmarc

Acronis TrueImage for disc imaging. Currently we use Backup Exec 11d for backup/restore but will be switching to an online backup solution in the upcoming months.

royal

RTmarc wrote:

Acronis TrueImage for disc imaging.

+1 with the Acronis Universal Restore addition so you can do a Bare Metal Restore to any hardware.

brad-

What exactly is a "bare metal" restore?

RTmarc

Another name for it is HIR; hardware independent restore (or restoration). Basically it means I can make a disk image of a Dell workstation and restore it a HP notebook or IBM workstation or whatever. It doesn't matter what type of hardware you restore it back to.

brad-

well color me noob, I didnt even know that was possible

blargoe

I have Backup Exec System Recovery (used to be called Live State Recovery), I've been pretty happy with it.

SWM

BESR Backup Exec System Recovery 7.02 is excellent. I have swapped many images from old PIII hardware to new Dual Xeon boards with no hassels.

brad-

While we're on the subject, do you use a dedicated server for this?

How many machines does it service, and how much storage do you need. We have about 12 servers, 100 ish workstations.

I know there is some considerable compression done in an image backup, but not sure how much...ie if a server/pc has X amount of data, we need X amount of disc space on the server for the image.

royal

You could use the Ghost Suite/Ghost Server so when you want to Ghost a client, you can connect it to the Ghost server, choose an image, and the Server will deploy that ghost image to the client.

hypnotoad

For us, deployment images of desktops with XP SP2, Office 2007, updates, about 10 stupid applications (Real Player, Acrobat...ick) come in at 7 gigs a piece. We have desktop PC as a server -- a gig of RAM and a 400 gig drive, 100 meg ethernet, and we image 4 systems at a time -- takes about 30 minutes using Ghost 8.

That's just for deployments, which we do a couple times a year on a couple hundred systems.

For backup we use BE11d, which I have to say is not cool.

snadam

ill add my endorsement for Acronis. Universal Restore VERY handy

paintb4707

I just recently purchased Acronis for my company as well. I love the interface but I had a hard time getting it to work properly and the tech support is absolutely terrible. They won't troubleshoot over the phone, instead they'll email you a list of instructions that never work and you end up calling back 3 or 4 times before an incident even gets resolved. I've opened about 5 tickets and each issue I had to resolve on my own because they were either clueless or they would take days (or even weeks) to get back to me. And this is "priority" support, ha!

For example, just recently they came out with an update... I installed it and I couldn't do any backups to the backup server. I created a request, even spoke to the support manager because I was so unhappy with the tech support and its STILL been several days and I haven't heard anything. I downgraded all my servers to the previous version and what do you know, backups were working again. I'm convinced that none of their tech agents have even used or seen the application in person4, and not to mention test updates.

If shitty tech support is something to consider, I'd also suggest ShadowCraft StorageProtect. It does pretty much all the same stuff for a much cheaper cost. You can download a demo. http://www.storagecraft.com